ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the process of undertaking clinical work with toddlers referred because of disruptive behaviour and sleep difficulties revealed patterns of interaction between mother and child that suggested, retrospectively, that the mothers had suffered from undiagnosed post-natal depression during the period of their children’s infancy. The psychoanalyst Esther Bick described infants developing muscular “second-skin defences” as a way of holding themselves together in the absence of maternal containment. The infant’s contribution to maternal depression can also be significant. L. Murray and P. J. Cooper describe the “role of infant and maternal factors in post-partum depression”, arguing in the Cambridge study that poor motor functioning and neonatal irritability “significantly increased the risk of the mother’s becoming depressed”. A vicious cycle can be set up as the baby pushes back his feelings into mother with increasing force and hostility, attempting to elicit a response. This is often the source of the disruptive attention-seeking behaviour labelled Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
